Women farmworkers call for land redistribution to address hunger

On World Hunger Day, the Women on Farms Project has called for the South African government to introduce social protection for farmworkers during off-season and for the implementation of land redistribution for their benefit.

The majority of farmworker in most parts of the country are employed as seasonal workers. This means they get hired to work during specific agricultural seasons, like planting, harvesting, or processing crops. In the fruit farms of the Western Cape, the off-season is from March to September. During this time, according to Collete Solomons, the director of Women on Farms, hunger and starvation become more severe as families only rely on child grants as a source of income.

“When it’s off-season, the farmworkers are unemployed and have no source of income. The issue of not having food gives rise to tensions in the house and increases the chances of gender-based violence. Families are forced to rely on child grants. The grants are too little but they provide a regular source of income every month. This is why we are calling for seasonal social protection for farmworkers,” she said.

Solomons was speaking at the World Hunger Day Indaba in Cape Town, organised by the Union Against Hunger on Wednesday. Similar events were held in Johannesburg and Durban.

A report by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and University of the Western Cape, according to Solomons, found that over 80% of farmworkers experience seasonal hunger, with the most severe food insecurity occurring during the winter.

Women on Farms called for the formalisation of land redistribution targeting women farmworkers and the poor. “Part of the reparation that we’re demanding is land redistribution, and specifically land redistribution of productive farm land to women farmworkers in particular, but to poor communities in general. Women in the workshop today said that there is such a lot of unused land on farms. There are tracks of land that the farmer does not use and has not used for decades. If we start with that and if the government can compel farmers to make available all their unused and productive land, that would start to address some of the hunger issues that they face,” Solomons said.

Meaning of food insecurity

Yandiswa Mazwana from Masiphumelele Creative Hub said food insecurity starts from pregnancy and continues right through childhood into adulthood. Mazwana said that access to food for women in townships is also a struggle.

“Food insecurity begins from the day a mother conceives and depends on whether she consumes healthy foods that will help with the baby’s development, and on whether she can breastfeed until the child is 1,000 days,” she said. Mazwana said that they conducted a survey of primary school children asking them where vegetables come from and most of them said ‘from the shop’. Access to land for food gardening could change their perception and nutrition, she said.

Food insecurity makes all other hardships for women, worse. “If I look at the violence on the Cape Flats, it’s the woman that shows up at the gate with the blue eye. She is not there to ask for a protection order but comes for a plate of food. It’s the woman that says, no, I don’t have taxi fare to go to the police station to have a protection order. I need to use that for a loaf of bread,” said Caroline Peters, the executive director of the Callas Foundation.

Violence in communities also affects residents’ access to food. As Peters observed, the Callas Foundation is based in Bridgetown where there no gangs and men come from nearby gang-infested areas like Bonteheuwel, Mannenberg, and Heideveld to queue for food at the soup kitchen. “I noticed that there were lots of men in our queues and I was told that they prefer our soup kitchen because there are no gangs. In their areas they cannot go to certain areas because of turf wars. So there is a correlation between gangs violence and hunger in the Cape Flats,” she said.